“Do you want the cab to wait for us, or what?”
“No; that won’t be necessary. We can walk back to the village when we’re ready. At the same time I’ll call on the estate agent. He’s a sort of jack-of-all-trades who’ll handle everything.”
Clive nodded, paid off the driver, then followed the girl along the front path to a portico of rustic-faced stone. She removed a key from her big, chrome-topped handbag and opened the front door.
Clive walked behind her into a square, tastefully furnished hall and then into a lounge leading from it. There was nothing unique about the room. It was light and sunny, windows at each end looking on to the back and front gardens, and comfortably furnished.
“Sit down, Clive,” Elsa said. “I’ll fix up some tea and sandwiches for us—”
“But surely I can help you?”
“There’s no need. Really.”
But since he was insistent, she said no more and he wandered after her into the kitchen. He stood against the doorway, watching her make preparations, unable to help her because he did not know where to find anything. Then he frowned a little as he caught sight of the big cupboard doors over the stove. They were firmly closed and secured with six shiny-headed screws down the sides.
“That’s a queer idea, isn’t it?” he asked, and Elsa glanced above her head.
“Oh, you mean the doors? That was my father’s idea. They used to keep swinging out a lot and he was always banging his head on them. One day he got really mad and screwed them up.”
“And you’ve left them like that? They only want new catches. Think of the cupboard room you’re losing.”
“I’m not bothered. One person doesn’t need a lot of cupboard room, anyway.”
Elsa completed the sandwiches and made tea without explaining matters any further. As she and Clive drank it in the lounge Clive glanced about him.
“Seems a pity to have to sell this place up,” he mused. “So quiet and restful. I believe I really could paint masterpieces here. So much better than in that rather squalid studio of mine.”
“My only wish,” Elsa answered quietly, “now I’ve got the opportunity is to get away from this place. I know every stick and stone of it. As I told you, I was born in it. I must get away from it, Clive. To settle down here to married life would be just too much for me.”
He smiled. “Okay. We’ll use my London flat until we can find something larger. Now, what things do you want to keep, and what to sell? You’d better make an inventory, then the estate agent will know what he’s doing.”
Elsa nodded and reached out to the bureau near her elbow. Drawing a sheet of paper from it she began to jot down items as they occurred to her. Clive watched her for a moment, then with a sandwich halfway to his mouth he paused, looking at a door in a corner of the room. He had noticed it when he had first entered the room, but at that time the angle of sunlight had cast it somewhat in shadow. Now it was perfectly clear, and the brilliant sunshine was playing on eight shiny-headed screws, similar to those in the kitchen cupboard, four driven home on each side.
“Great Scott, don’t tell me that door swings too!” he exclaimed.
“Door?” Elsa looked at him, rousing herself from meditation; then she turned her head. “That? There’s a cellar beyond that. It used to be for coal, then my father had an outhouse made for it. In consequence that door, on the other side, drops down into a dangerous well—so it’s sealed up. You may have noticed how the house juts on one side. That’s the empty area behind that door.”
“Oh, I get it,” Clive acknowledged, resuming eating—but he rather wondered, deep down, if he really did. The passion Elsa Farraday’s father seemed to have had for screwing up doors had had something of the quality of a mania.
“There, I think that’s everything,” Elsa said finally, considering the list she had made and tapping her teeth with the pencil. “Typewriter, manuscripts, blank paper, clothes and other necessities, of course— Yes, that’s the lot.”
Clive looked at her and then glanced sideways at the list.
“There’s far more on that sheet than just those items,” he remarked in surprise. “What else is there?”
“Oh, just odds and ends.” For some reason she coloured hotly and a defensive light glinted in her grey eyes. With a quiet possessiveness Clive ignored her obvious emotion and took the list from her.
“What’s this?” he asked, frowning. “The entire contents of the small room over the hall to be kept intact and stored until you give further instructions....”
“It’s private,” she said, her mouth very firm.
“Okay, I don’t want to pry, but it’s hard to find flats these days and a whole extra room full of stuff is going to be a tough proposition. What’s in the room?”
“Oh, things. Personal.”
“Furniture, you mean?”
“Well, yes,” Elsa admitted.
Clive got to his feet. “We’d better see,” he decided. “I want to be knowing what I’m doing. Lead the way.”
She rose, shaking her head.
“I don’t want you to see those things,” she said earnestly. “In that room is something which is very dear to me. You’d just call it junk and probably laugh at me too. Please, Clive—don’t ask me to explain. If it comes to it I’ll find an extra room somewhere myself for them. I don’t want it to be your responsibility.”
He hesitated, driven by the masculine urge to demand a better reaction from his wife-to-be; then his good nature settled the issue.
“All right, if you want to have secrets, have ’em! I wouldn’t spoil your fun for worlds! Come to think of it, I have a secret too.”
“You have?” Her eyes were startled. “What?”
“Oh, nothing very terrible,” he assured her, laughing. “Gosh, what a nervy girl you are sometimes! My secret is a slit in the bathroom wall of my flat into which I push my old razor blades. Ssssh! Don’t tell a soul!”
“Oh, you—you idiot!” she exclaimed, laughing somewhat uncomfortably. “I thought for a moment it was going to be something really important.”
“Like your mysterious furniture?” he asked dryly. “And how are you going to do about your various things? Pity I didn’t bring the car.”
“It doesn’t signify,” she answered. “Ted Husting, the estate agent, knows me well enough, and he’s an auctioneer, real estate agent, remover, and heaven knows what else. I’ll simply tell him what I want done and where to send everything, and that will be that. He’ll find storage space for the stuff in—that room.”
“Uh-huh,” Clive agreed, and they were both silent for a moment.
Clive, indeed, was conscious of a grim impasse. Though he had tossed the matter off lightly his mind was still drifting in vague perplexity to whatever “secret” the girl had.
“I take it that everything can go to your flat except the furniture?” she asked, picking up her handbag.
“Surely— Which reminds me, you haven’t even seen it yet!” Clive gave a start. “Hmm—we’ll remedy that the moment we get back to the city. The address is Grant Apartments, 18a, Marton Street, West Central.”
“I’ll remember,” Elsa said; then after a final glance about her she added, “Well, that’s all for now. Let’s be going. Tomorrow I’ll telephone my bank and have them transfer my account to the nearest London branch.”
Clive followed, her out of the room and across the hall. She made sure the front door was securely locked and together they went down the pathway.
“I still like this district,” Clive said, giving his head a little admiring shake as he glanced about the hot countryside. “All except the swamp, of course.... Anybody ever get lost in it?”
“Plenty of people,” the girl answered quietly. “Strangers as a rule who lost their way in the mist which settles at night around these low-lying parts. Far as I know about a dozen people have gone down at different times. Once, even, I heard one of them scream as he sank. It was in the winter— I never quite for
got it,” she finished, with a little shudder.
Clive glanced at her and gripped her arm reassuringly.
“This is daylight, and summertime,” he said gently. “There’s no earthly good can come of remembering those kind of happenings. Candidly, Elsa, I think you let your mind brood far too much on the unpleasant things of life. Maybe that’s why your thrillers are so horrific.”
“No, that isn’t the reason,” she answered, with a strange little smile. “It’s because—”
She stopped, glancing up, and Clive drew her to the side of the road as a two-seater open car came into view round the bend. The driver sounded the horn once and then applied the brakes. A dark, homely-looking young man with brown eyes, a soft hat pushed up on his forehead, contemplated the two seriously.
“Clem!” Elsa exclaimed, and for some reason there was look of consternation on her face. “Where on earth did you spring from?”
“Not a matter of springing. I was just coming along to take you out in the ordinary way. It’s Thursday evening, remember—and that’s my usual time for calling.”
“Thursday?” Elsa repeated vaguely. Then she seemed to remember. She glanced at her watch. It was ten minutes to six.
“At six o’clock on Thursdays I always call,” the young man said, a harshness in his deliberate voice. “Why should this Thursday be any different?”
“I’d—forgotten,” Elsa said, making an effort to get herself in hand. She turned to Clive. “This is Clem Hargraves, Clive, a very good friend of mine. This is Clive Hexley, Clem....”
“Also a very good friend of yours?” Clem Hargraves asked.
“As a matter of fact I am,” Clive responded, his jaw hardening. “I can’t say I altogether like your attitude towards my fiancée, either.”
“Your what?” Clem Hargraves gave a start, and Elsa gave an anxious glance from one man to the other.
“Fiancée,” Clive repeated deliberately.
“That,” Clem Hargraves said, “definitely does it! Of all the cheap, low-down tricks! I’d never have thought it of you, Elsa.... Oh, congratulations,” he added sourly, and raised his soft hat to a needless height. Then reversing the car swiftly, he aped back up the lane and vanished in clouds of dust.
“Who is that character?” Clive demanded, as the girl stared helplessly after him.
“I was going to become engaged to him,” she responded, after a pause. “Each Thursday evening he used to call for me in his car and we’d go out somewhere together—to Kingswood, or Guildford, to a show of some kind. Only with so many other things happening I’d completely forgotten all about him.”
“You had, eh?” Clive took her arm as they resumed walking. He had the feeling that there was something wrong here. Surely no girl could completely forget the man to whom she was all but engaged? It was more suggestive of her so timing things that they had been bound to meet him, which had given her the chance to snub him. Which seemed to throw a not altogether pleasant sidelight on Elsa’s character.
“He’s a commercial,” Elsa explained presently. “Grocery, or something. I’ve known him for years, and since I’ve lived a pretty secluded sort of life he seemed to be about the only man near my own age with whom I came in contact. He used to call at the house when my parents were alive, for grocery orders. We became friends and....” She raised a shoulder negatively. “Well, I really had seriously considered becoming engaged to him. He’d asked me often enough. Then I met you and he went clean out of my mind.”
“Uh-huh,” Clive murmured, and be was perfectly willing to admit that the emotional impact could have banished all other thoughts from Elsa’s mind.
“He’s a dull chap,” Elsa sighed. “Incredibly dull. He plods, whereas I like to trip. I don’t think you can ever escape from yourself by just plodding, do you?”
“Having never tried to escape from myself—which seems to be a passion with you—I can’t say,” Clive answered. Then he laughed slightly. “Y’know, Elsa, come to think of it, we seem to have upset two people with our affairs. Babs Vane, and now this chap. Too bad, of course, but after all they shouldn’t take so much for granted.”
They both became silent again, and it was a quietness in which they finished their journey to the village, Elsa leading the way along the high street to the estate agent’s office. Across his window was a string of qualifications which in any modern town would have excited amusement—AUCTIONEER, REAL ESTATE, REMOVALS, PORTERING, DECORATING.
“Apparently the ‘Admirable Crichton’,” Clive commented, grinning.
Elsa smiled and seized the knob of the office’s front door; then she frowned in annoyance, studying a card behind the glass. It stated briefly: AWAY ARRANGING FUNERAL. BACK FRIDAY.
“Which,” Clive sighed, “seems to be that! Now what do you do? Leave him a note?”
“I can’t do that; there are too many items. I’d be here all night writing them out.... No,” Elsa decided, “I’ll telephone him from London tomorrow. That’ll be good enough.” She glanced at her watch. “And if we want to catch that six-forty train for Guildford with the London connection we’d better hurry. Come on—the station’s half a mile up the street yet.”
CHAPTER FOUR
That evening Elsa saw the flat in Marton Street and also realized from its smallness why it was necessary for Clive to start an immediate hunt for a larger one in readiness for when they were married. The remainder of the evening they spent in a night spot of Clive’s own choosing, and towards midnight they parted—Elsa to her hotel and Clive to his flat.
At nine the following morning he called for her with his car and drove her out to his Chelsea studio. Having achieved his object of becoming engaged to her he seemed convinced that the distraction of her presence would no longer worry him in completing the portrait of her.
Another form of distraction was waiting outside the studio door, however, as the two discovered when they had mounted to the fifth floor.
“Hello, Clive,” Barbara Vane greeted, with a kind of sulky friendliness.
“Huh! The prodigal!” Clive exclaimed, gazing at her as he fumbled for his keys. “What brought you back, anyway? I thought you’d gone out of my life forever.”
“Anybody is entitled to second thoughts,” Barbara answered, and glanced at Elsa. “Morning, Elsa,” she added briefly.
Elsa did not reply. She just gazed, coldly.
Clive opened the door and the two women went into the wide, glass-roofed expanse ahead of him. As he tossed down his hat he studied them, feeling very much as though he were watching two tigresses sharpening their claws for battle.
“Just what is the reason for this about-face?” Elsa asked at length, removing her hat and coat. “If you have the idea that your coming back will break things up between Clive and myself you’re vastly mistaken. See for yourself....”
Barbara languidly contemplated the bulging diamond on Elsa’s finger. Then she removed her coat and threw it over a chair back.
“I didn’t expect anything else but a ring after seeing the way Clive had fallen for you,” she said. “And, in any case I don’t care. That’s all washed up.... But I got to thinking. I’m not exactly reeking with money, even if Clive is—and, Clive, you did say something about my running out on my contract?”
“Yes,” he agreed bluntly. “But if that’s all that’s worrying you I’ll release you from it and pay you up to date.”
Barbara said quietly, “You’ve half a dozen pictures unfinished with me as the model. What do you propose to do with them? Throw them on the ash-heap?”
“Elsa will take your place. We’ve already arranged that.”
The blonde girl considered Elsa with cynical attention. A flush came into Elsa’s pale cheeks.
“What’s the matter?” she demanded. “I’ve as good a figure as you, haven’t I?”
“I wasn’t thinking of that: I was studying your features. You can’t change those in the paintings you’ve done, Clive: only I will do, and you know it. And n
eed I remind you that some of those paintings are commissioned? They’re not just for you to throw about as you like.”
Clive lighted a cigarette and mused for a moment.
“Yes, that’s true,” he confessed. “Truth to tell, I’ve been so concentrated on this portrait of Elsa I’d overlooked all the other stuff.”
“Then start remembering it,” Barbara advised. “I’m no business manager but at least I know how to keep you on the right track—and I hope your fiancée will manage half as well,” she added dryly. “The completion of those pictures means a good deal of money for you—and to me it also means a good deal in prestige, beside the fee to which I’m entitled.”
“Prestige?” Clive repeated, puzzled.
Barbara spread her hands. “I have to find another job as a model somewhere, don’t I? When I apply for it I want to be able to point to these commissioned portraits with myself as the model. You owe me that much, Clive, even if only in the sense of a reference.”
“I think you’ve something more behind this,” Elsa said bluntly, “and whatever it is I don’t like it.”
“I think that whatever happens we’ll never like each other very much,” Barbara commented, with a frank gaze.
“All right, all right, wait a minute,” Clive insisted, bothered by the vision of woman-trouble on his hands. “Let me say the last word since I’m the artist concerned. As usual, Babs, you’ve got the right business slant on it. Very well, I’ll complete the pictures in which you are posed, pay you up, and that finishes everything. Right?”
“Right,” Barbara agreed. “I’ll go and prepare.”
She turned and hurried into the adjoining dressing room. Elsa watched the door close and then swung back to Clive as he took off his coat and began to roll up his sleeves.
“What’s the idea of giving her preference over me?” she asked angrily. “We came here to finish my portrait—and instead you’re swayed by a few words on her part and forget all about me!”
“No, dear, it isn’t that.” Clive patted her shoulder gently. “You see, I happen to know Babs better than you do. If I were to spend my time trying to paint your portrait she’d stay here and keep on distracting my attention. She’s definitely out to do it because she’s piqued at my becoming engaged to you. If instead I finish off the pictures in which she is the model she has no excuse for staying—and out she goes. That’s only logical, don’t you think?”
Reflected Glory Page 3
